as the clock counts down to me sitting in a hairstylist's chair to get my hair chopped off—a clock that started its countdown years ago in my head, but has only recently been given a definitive calendar date of May 18th, 2019—i've on-and-off made an effort to help my mom 'get over it.'
that feel when you finally have a use for relationship terminology, but none of it makes sense to you because all of it is predicated on the assumption that you subscribe to the dichotomy of “romantic” vs “[queer]platonic”– not to even mention the equally taxing concept that is “alterous”.
posted with the permission of a friend, the above gem is but one of many examples of antiblack racism, transphobia and binarism that my friend is subjected to regularly on Grindr in Osaka and Tokyo. sharing it here as i often hear of this kind of thing happening on Grindr in English speaking countries, but see little about it beyond that. antiblackness is not unique to America or other English speaking countries, it is universal. and least there be any false assumptions made based on the above example being in English, my friend receives similar messages from non-English speakers in Japanese and has also received such messages during their time living in South Korea. this is Old News that is apparently Breaking News to some, but rest assured it most certainly is not Fake News.
ever tried to come out to someone only to be met with “i already knew that”? before last week, i couldn’t say that i have, but when a coworker thinks their “gaydar” is on-point, but that gaydar ever-so-predictably fails to extend beyond just “GAY”, mental eye rolling, story time and a mini word vomit ensue. what does it mean to be “visibly queer” and why is it that more often than not ‘queer’ is often taken to be synonymous with “gay”? and is there any such thing as “visibly trans” or “visibly non-binary”? don’t expect to find any answers here, as it took me considerable effort just to limit my apathetic word vomit to 5 minutes zzz… two days post-recording and much sleep deprivation later…
as usual, i find myself turning to YouTube as a resource for information only to be reminded that…. YouTube is So Damn White. most things non-binary and / or trans are So Damn White. a search for “non-binary” and “testosterone” turns up almost nothing but skinny, short haired, white, non-binary people, none of whom i can really see myself in. which is nothing new. that’s part of the reason i’m on YouTube in the first place.
anonymous said: On the visibility thing- I am a trans person who wants to be proudly and visibly trans, mostly because I’m genderqueer and there isn’t really a way to “pass” as gq, so being seen as cis is automatically misgendering me. So I try to be as “nonpassing” and obviously trans/queer as possible. And I’m sure there are plenty of other trans people who want to be visibly trans, otherwise stuff like trans pride shirts and such wouldn’t exist, no? Or am I misunderstanding what you mean by visibility? ( re: this post ) i agree with you, anon, that there are a lot of people who want to visibly subvert and / or defy the assumption that they are cis a man / woman or otherwise a binary gender that they are not– especially among those for whom (as you pointed out) “passing” as their gender (or lack thereof) is…
anonymous said: This is probably a complex issue, so apologies in advance if I have to send multiple asks, but I’m white l, and recently I have been identifying as Maverique, it is the best way I’ve found to describe my gender and it sits very well for me, but I had someone who was a POC tell me it was appropriative of POC cultures and was basically just ‘white people taking it and making it okay to id as a third gender’ and, while I disagreed with them and it was very upsetting, (pt 1) I know it is not my place to argue with them over what is and isn’t cultural appropriation. I’m not really sure what to do, because they told me it would be racist of me to continue id’ing as maverique and that I should use neutrois or something similar instead, but neutral terms aren’t…
…so i randomly went to Book Off (used bookstore) today after work and happened to find two used books on gender studies / gender theory that not only ① explicitly discuss binarism and how society ignores those who are neither of the binary genders (male / female) nor either of the binary sexualities (gay / straight)– there’s also ② explicit mention of asexuality and the alphabet soup where the acronym LGBTIAQ is used and I is defined as “Intersex”, A as “Asexual” and Q as “Queer”. notably, these books were published in ① 2013 & ② 2006 and are original works by Japanese authors rather than books imported into Japan and translated into Japanese. below are super rough (because i’m starving, exhausted and need to go to bed damnit) English translations for the above snippets.
anonymous said: (suicide ideation, death threat and conversion tw) i found an old post about a poc ace and went on their blog and they know say they don’t identify as ace because aces are bad, basically. and like, i’m literally crying. idk what to do, that just really struck me. someone who wrote about being queer, ace and a poc like me shitting on me and telling me my identity is inherently problematic when it’s the reason i can’t access mental health atm, which is something i need cause the ‘discourse’ & the violent abuse i faced on this website for, including death threats, caused me to fall back into suicidal ideation. and the only therapist available to me suggested conversion therapy (i live in a small central american country, there’s not much knowledge about these things- she thinks if i can be converted to straight, i will no…
…mmm, that feel when you’re getting an influx of notes because a certain post of yours is being circulated among TERF lesbians praising Japan for its trans misogyny. edit: oh joy, of course someone had to go there. trigger warning for all of the links in this post, but rape warning for that last one.
